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LeHavre winced. How many young men have you sent to their doom with those words on their lips? Valentine wondered.
"You can thank me by coming back, David."
The three Wolves mounted their horses, the excited animals stamping and tossing their heads in their eagerness to be off, and rode into the misty dawn.
During the first leg of the journey, they kept to the rough terrain of the MississippiValley. They conserved the strength of horse and rider, walking their mounts and stopping often. On the second day, they crossed the Mississippi in a hollowed-out old houseboat, well camouflaged with dirt and plant growth on its battered sides. The trio of old Wolves who took them across laughed as they listened to the secondhand story of the Battle of Hazlett over the labored putting of the aged diesel engine.
"That'll learn 'em," one of them cackled as he brought the houseboat out of its hidden cove and into the current at the "all clear" signal from his observer. "Hank and I, we've been puttin' up signs all over the west bank for miles readin' 'Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted' and 'No Solicitors Invited," but them Grogs don't read too good."
Once in no-man's-land, the Wolves traveled cautiously. They camped for the night when they found the right spot, not when the sun set. Daybreak never found them in the same location in which they bedded down. Each night Valentine ordered a camp change of at least a half-mile, and lost sleep was made up with a siesta each afternoon during the worst of the late summer heat. They set no watch, but relied on their senses to rouse them from their light slumber in the event of danger. They always cooked their meals before dark, knowing better than to call attention to themselves with the light of a campfire.
By the third night out, they were swapping life stories. Valentine had heard Gonzalez's before, but listened again to his scout's words as he lay in his hammock under a cloud-masked moon.
"I was born in Texas in 2041, out there in the western part. My parents were part of a guerrilla band called the Screaming Eagles, which my father told me was an old army unit and my madre said was a music group. They used to do a war cry... I would do it, but it's too loud for these parts. Too loud for the Ozarks, too. I don't remember much fighting when I was young. I think the Eagles stole cattle off the Turncoats. That was what we called the Quislings out there. Sometimes in the summer we went as far north as Kansas and Colorado, and in the winter we would be in Mexico.
"I was about twelve when the Turncoats got us. It was in Mexico. We were in this kind of bowl-shaped valley, a few old buildings and tents, with the cattle all spread out. They got some cannon up in the hills somehow, and pretty soon there were explosions everywhere, with men on horseback pouring down from the mountains. My father fought them, but I'm sure he was killed with the rest. There were just two passes out of the valley, but they had hundreds of men with guns hidden in the rocks. I don't think anyone made it out that way. My madre got me and my baby brother out over the hills. One of the Turncoats caught up to us. He attacked her, but I picked up his gun and shot him in the foot. He grabbed the gun out of my hands and was going to shoot me, but my madre brought a boulder as big as a football down on his head and killed him. God knows how she found the strength to lift it; she was a small woman."
Gonzalez fingered a small silver crucifix around his neck.
"We walked for days and would have died, but a rainstorm saved us. We hid for a while in a Turncoat village. An old man who was kind to us arranged for my mother to move into eastern Texas where his son lived. My mother lived with his son and had a child with him, but she never loved him as she did my father, even though he was very good to us. She gave him two daughters, but when I turned sixteen, she said, "Victor, you must leave this land, for the people here have forgotten themselves and God." We heard rumors about a place in the mountains where the Hooded Ones could not go, and I found this place on my own, but I fear it went bad for my stepfather, who let me ran away. But I know my madre still lives because I still live; her prayers protect me and keep me alive. With what I have seen, I cannot pray as she does, so when she dies, I will die, too."
Valentine told his story next, leaving out the fact that his father had been a Wolf. He described the cool beauty of the Boundary Waters' woods and lakes, and the challenge of living through a Minnesota winter.
"I hadn't seen much geography until I became a Wolf," Harper began. "I was born to a big family near FortScott. My pa was an officer in the Guards, and he tried to keep me in school, but I wouldn't have it. Everyone made fun of this eye of mine; you know how kids are. At nine, I tried to be an Aspirant, but they wouldn't let me. I hung out in Wolf camps whenever I could; my pa was away a lot, and my ma-Well, she had her hands full with the other children. They let me become an Aspirant at thirteen, finally. I was invoked when I was fifteen, and I was in the middle of it at Cedar Hill and then BigRiver. They made me a sergeant after all that. I was a champion distance runner, so I got put in the couriers. I made a trip to the Gulf in 'sixty-three, and did the run to Lake Michigan twice last year. I crossed Tennessee this spring going to the Appalachians, and that's the worst run I've ever been on. Took me forever to find resistance people in the Smokies. These trips should be run by just couriers, but we've lost so many out West over one thing and another that Command is short on messengers."
"I was wondering why you showed up with two empty saddles," Valentine said.
"Well, I'm grateful of your company. Mr. Valentine, you seem to be a right smart officer, afraid of all the right things, if you'll excuse me for saying so, sir. And Gonzalez-you, sir, have the most righteous set of ears in the Free Territory. I'm glad you're along to count the mouse farts, you know?"
Gonzalez proved just how good his hearing was somewhere east of Galena, Illinois. They had been traveling for a week when someone began trailing them.
"There are three or four riders coming up behind," Gonzo reported. "Haven't caught sight of them yet, but you can hear them. I don't know if they're right on our trail or just keeping with the old road."
The three Wolves rode parallel to an old road, now overgrown but still too far from tall timber for their purposes. Valentine debated the choices. An ambush would be easy enough to set up, but he balked at shooting down strangers in cold blood. Anyone close enough for the Wolves to hear would probably have cut their trail by now and would know someone was ahead. The idea of being trailed worried him.
"Do you know who lives around here?" he asked Harper.
"This far off the river? A few farmers scratch a living out here. On other trips we've crossed the trails of pretty big groups on horseback. I don't like thinking worst case, but this is just the kind of area a pair of Reapers might hunt."
"Yes, but they wouldn't be on horseback. And they wouldn't make enough noise for Gonzo to hear them," Valentine argued. As usual, someone else's opinion helped him form his own, for better or worse. "Let's go up the bluffs. If they're casual travelers, they won't follow. If they come up after us, we can get a good look at what we're taking on before we start shooting."
With that, the Wolves made a sharp turn east, moving into the wooded hills away from the overgrown road. Valentine removed his lever-action rifle from its sheath. Soon they were struggling up a steep slope, leaning far forward in their saddles to help the horses' balance.
As they ascended the hill, Valentine searched right and left. No rock pile or fallen trunk presented itself. Valentine cursed his luck at riding for the one uneroded hill covered with uniformly healthy timber in all of western Illinois.
Gaining the summit, the Wolves at last found a deadfall they could hide behind. The breeze blew fresh from the west hard enough to whip at the horses' manes and make the men clutch at their hats. They rode past the fallen log and looped back; tracks heading straight for an ambush spot would be investigated more cautiously. Valentine asked Harper-to hold the four horses out of sight behind the crest of the hill.
Dismounted, with weapons in hand, Valentine and Gonzalez walked back to the fallen log. Gonzalez held an arrow to his bowstring. With luck, the trackers had a single scout out front who could be silently dispatched with a feathered shaft.
"Keep your bow ready, Gonzo," Valentine said in a low tone. "I'm going to get in that oak above our trail. If there's just two scouts, I'll drop on one. When you see me leap, try for the other with the bow. If it's three or four, I'll let them ride past, and I'll backshoot them."
"Let me go up the tree, sir."
"I'm not much with a bow, my friend. I doubt I could hit a horse at this distance, let alone a rider. Just stay cool and wait for my signal."
Valentine scrambled to his perch among the thick limbs of the grandfather oak. He hugged the tree limbs like a lizard, pulling a leafy branch toward his face for concealment. Whoever the trackers were, they had four scouts ahead on horseback. Valentine listened with hard ears past them, but his nose helped even more. A large group of horses and men were somewhere out of sight, upwind to the west. He smelled some tobacco, and cannabis, as well.
As the scouts walked their horses up the slope and into view, Valentine decided this was no Quisling patrol. The shabbiness of man and beast, from worn-out boots to collapsed felt hat brims, indicated either the worst kind of Quisling irregulars or simple bandits. They carried rifles, but some of the guns looked like black-powder muzzle-loaders.
